Aston Villa have completed the signing of Jean Makoun from Lyon for a fee thought to be in the region of €6m* possibly rising by a further €3m depending on performances. The 27 year old brings a wealth of experience with almost 250 Ligue 1 appearance, more than 50 European appearances and 56 caps for Cameroon including four African Nations Championships and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

He’s a robust and competitive defensive midfielder, not dissimilar to Nigel Reo-Coker, but has the finer passing skills that NRC lacks. He’s perfectly capable of playing a quarterback style role, sat in front of the back line spraying the ball around among the front players. The wide men in particular might benefit from his distribution to the corners.

Here’s his career to date in numbers:

Gerard Houllier tried to sign Makoun when he was Lyon boss:-

Gerard Houllier
When he was at Lille, I tried to sign him [for Lyon] and they signed him just after I left. It is an area where we need more players and we are trying to sign quality players.

He can play as a holding midfielder or go box-to-box and it is an area where we don’t have a lot of experience. The two that are playing at the moment, [Nigel] Reo-Coker and [Stilian] Petrov, we saw what happened when the two were injured at the same time.

Hopefully he settles in quickly, we could certainly do with someone of his calibre in the middle of the park. I’m looking forward to seeing him run out in claret and blue as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it won’t be this Sunday as players had to be registered by noon on Friday for this weekend and the work permit process will take a couple of weeks in any case.

Bienvenue à Aston Villa, Jean!

*Best guess transfer fee at this time.